


AJ and Mags' Bogus Journey (working title)

by readyfreddie



Category: Original Work
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 11:42:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17549042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readyfreddie/pseuds/readyfreddie
Summary: AJ is woken one night by his friend Ollie, who's sneaked into his apartment because he says they need to talk. He's here to explain a mystery and set a task: AJ is destined to save the world.Probably a comedy.





	1. February 2002

February 2002

The sound of a key sliding into the lock of the front door has AJ's eyes snapping open. Maggie, predictably, remains asleep next to him, but Gadget and Sprocket, who would normally be up and vibrating with alertness at the noise, if not yapping their tiny little heads off, also remain fast asleep. Heart pounding, AJ sits up. 

"Just me man."

"Ollie?"

"Heeeey buddy." Ollie sits indian style at the foot of the bed, almost on Maggie's feet. Still, the dogs don't stir. 

AJ scrubs his hands over his eyes and through his hair. The lights are all off, and Ollie is still sitting on his bed, streetlight shining through the window glinting off his pale hair. "The fuck?"

"So, we need to talk."

AJ blinks at him. Blinks at the dogs, dead to the world, snuggled up next to Maggie. It's so quiet - too quiet. "Dude. What. The. Fuck."

Ollie lights a cigarette, and AJ automatically hands him Maggie's ashtray from the bedside table. He accidentally jostles Gadget, and still she doesn't even twitch. "Is this a dream?"

"Sure, if you want." Ollie blows a smoke ring.

"I don't - what?"

"Ok, so here's the thing. Remember when you died?"

AJ's heart, which had just begun to calm, races again.

"What the fuck. Ollie." He gasps in a breath. "How did you even know about that?"

"Er. Uh. So. Here's the thing…"


	2. January 2019

January 2019

Aaron Janczewski is almost 37 years old, and he's so fucking tired. It's not like he isn't getting enough sleep. He sleeps all the effing time. Whenever he's not working he's sleeping, or drinking to get there, because if he didn't have a little goddamn assistance sometimes he'd just be awake all the time, wide fucking awake and wondering how this is his life. No, seriously. How is this his life?

AJ is almost 37 years old, and he wakes up (most days) and goes to work, then comes home and has some drinks, and then he wakes up and showers off the sweat and tosses away the cans and bottles and does it all again. He's got nothing else. 

Sometimes he kids himself, thinking, "It wasn't supposed to be like this," but seriously, he's only fucking kidding himself, it was always going to be like this. He was married barely two years before his wife left him, because AJ is too much to handle - has always been too much to handle. He's just a bundle of nervousness and neurosis in a quivering lump of stressed out flesh.

Ever since he can remember, AJ's been painfully, cripplingly shy, and while that abated a bit in middle and high school, aided by friends he'd had since preschool somehow becoming the popular kids, and raising AJ up with them by association, thus injecting him with a bit of false confidence for the last few years of his education, it didn't stick. After graduation, his friends all trickled and drifted away, leaving him… bereft. 

Letting the bathroom door swing shut behind him, AJ makes his bleary way back to the bar, knowing he should just bypass the stool he's been sitting on the past couple hours and head right out the front door, but…

He heaves his girth back onto the barstool next to Callum, who is 26 and has the longest eyelashes AJ has ever seen. He tries to swallow past the dryness in his throat when Callum hands him a shot glass. Normally, he doesn't do this - drinks after work with the guys or whatever. Any time spent outside of his usual routine makes him feel unsteady and off kilter. Just being there makes his fingertips almost too sweaty to grip the glass, but he manages to toss it back. (Of course he does.)

Normally, he says no, but tonight Callum asked him, and AJ didn't. Callum, who is 26 and has long, long eyelashes and lean forearms corded with wiry muscle and delicate tendons, who has a pretty little girlfriend barely out of high school who just moved in with him. AJ gulps down more beer and hates himself (a little more).

"Janczewski, I seen your wife the other day at the Wal-Mart with your kid. She preggers again or she just packing on the pounds like you?" Russ says from the other side of Callum. Russ graduated the year after AJ, and while he's never been an asshole exactly - or not intentionally - he's always had chronic foot in mouth disease.

Kerry, on AJ's right side, throws a coaster in Russ' general direction, leans forward, looking around AJ. "Shut up you ass, AJ's wife left him three years ago," he hisses, like AJ himself isn't sitting right fucking there. Also, unless Russ is stupider than he seems (which would be epically, epically stupid) this should drive home the fact none of those children are AJ's - not the actual child, nor the one yet to emerge (unless Kelsey really did just get fat. He doesn't know, he hasn't seen her in years).

He pulls the brim of his cap down over his eyes, tugs his coat closed over his chest and stomach. The zipper strains. "Right, I'm out."

"Shit AJ, I didn't mean nothin' by it -"

"Dude, it's cool Russ. It's fine. Everyone knows you're just oblivious by nature." He winks and grins. That used to work, back in the day, even when his stomach was churning and his hands were shaking. Just smile like everything's fine, and miraculously, it is - at least as far as everyone else is concerned. "It's just getting late. Have to feed my cat."

His cat died last year, but whatever. It's way less pathetic than having to get home in time to drink even more beer so he can fall asleep fast enough to be awake and sober in time for work tomorrow. And so then the cycle can begin all over again. 

His car is 12 years old - it's a generic sedan his mother handed down to him after his wife got his truck in the divorce - but it gets him from the Kwik-E Mart to the drive-thru to home and back to the mill again just fine. It's fine. Everything is fine. 

The radio is playing Champagne Supernova which he hadn't heard in years - what station is even on? - as he eases the car up to 40, then 50, then 55, switches on the brights to try to cut through the fog, squints when it only reflects back at him and tries to switch back to regular beams, accidentally cuts the lights entirely. "Shit. Fuck, fuckity -" He's fucking drunk, damnit. That last, ill-advised shot is just hitting now. Vaguely registering the song playing now is Karma Police as he eases up on the gas, AJ is fumbling still for the headlights, trying to keep the car straight. He hopes the road is also straight. Finally they come on - there is light! - illuminating a deer standing directly in his path. There isn't even time to hit the breaks before the deer smashes into his windshield, and the car is sliding, smashing into something else - another car, he knows that sound - and than there's a brief impression of the guard rail giving way and everything is spinning and spinning, and then -


	3. February 2002

February 2002

"Ollie. I'm 20 years old. As far as you know, I'm very very alive." AJ pokes at Gadget, who snorts and tucks her muzzle into her paws. "Unless -" he reaches out a hand, tentative, toward Maggie, still out cold - "are we?"

"Oh, you're alive. They're… just sleeping. Really."

"What did you do? Ollie?" AJ's voice sounds plaintive in his own ears, childish. Which on one hand, he is practically a child - only 20 last week. On the other hand, in his mind, he's lived something like 43 years, so - But. What. The. Fuck.

"Look. It's just - you were supposed to save the world but it was almost 2020 and you...hadn't."

"I was supposed to save the world? _I_ was supposed to -" He scrubs at his face again. "Oliver. I was a middle aged, over weight drunk. What the fuck?"

"I know!" Ollie throws up his hands, scattering a but of ash. "Dude, you don't have to tell me about it, I know. You were pathetic - you all were - and something had to be done. So… we sort of hit reset? I guess. In like, layman's terms."

Let the record show, as far as AJ knows, Ollie is 20 years old. He's their age (their physical age) and had been since he first started to go to his and Maggie's high school sophomore year, and somehow became Maggie's best friend. Well, not somehow, it was inevitable really. They're like platonic soul mates - two peas in a pod, Maggie and Ollie. 

AJ squeezes his eyes shut tight, opens them again. Ollie is still sitting there, cigarette down to the filter. "You 'hit reset' because I - we? hadn't saved the world yet? Who's 'we?' Me and Maggie?"

"Nah, Mags has got nothing to do with it." Ollie grabs her ankle, looking down at her fondly. "I mean, she's done wonders for your character, even though she started off - or, like, ended - just as pathetic as you were. Before she died."

"Hey now -"

"She was and you know it. But look. I accidentally killed her too, when I killed you back then - or like, in the future or whatever? The old future anyway. And I felt bad. So I just kinda… sent her back with you?"

"Is that a question? Jesus fuck Ollie."

"Dude, sorry, no. I totally killed you both, you on purpose, Mags on accident, sent your souls back in time and stuck you in your own tiny adolescent bodies."

"Jesus Ollie. What. The. Fuck." AJ pauses. "Well at least I finally have an answer as to _why_."


	4. June 1995

June 1995

AJ wakes up and everything is pain. His mother is sitting beside him, her face full of worry, and she's reaching for him. "Aaron, sweetie -"

AJ thinks his situation must be dire - his mother hasn't been this nice to him since he was recently married and she thought he was finally getting his shit together. 

"Mom?" He tries to sit up but everything is spinning. "Ugh. I'm sorry about the car." Technically, she signed it over to him, but he knows she thinks of it as still being on loan, till, you know, he actually does get his life together (riiiight). (AJ might be the tiniest bit disappointed he's woken up.)

"What car?" She brushes his hair back out of his eyes. "Oh honey. You hit your head so hard."

Ugh, he really did. AJ closes his eyes, then - 

Wait. 

Since when does he have hair long enough to get in his eyes? His hair hasn't been that long in over a decade. Frankly, his hairline isn't really capable of it anymore. 

Turning his head, AJ looks at his mother. Her hair is dark and her face is plumper than it's been in years, lined only finely rather than deeply creased. "What the fuck?" he whispers. He brings his hand up to his face - it's smaller than it should be ( _"If your hand is bigger than your face you have cancer"_ ) and not callused, not stained by years of ingrained dirt from working at the mill, and relatively hairless. Even the whimper he lets out at the sight is a higher pitch than it should be. The strange hand falls to his belly, which is flat to the point of being concave, almost. "What. The. Fuck."

"Aaron, sweetie, I know you're in a lot of pain but please, try to mind your tongue. What will the nurses think?"

Hospital. AJ looks around him. He's in a hospital. "What the - I mean, what's going on Mom?"

"You don't remember? Honey, you fell down the stairs in the middle of the night and hit your head real good. You have a double concussion."

"Ok… how old am I?"

"Oh sweetie." She reaches for the call button. "Let's get the doctor in here."

Ugh. Fuckity fuck.


	5. February 2002

February 2002

"So you just… dropped us back in time, no explanation, nothing, just let us think we were living in an episode of the Twilight Zone." AJ wants to strangle Ollie a little bit maybe. 

"I mean, like, you figured it out eventually, right?"

"You asshole." AJ throws his pillow right at that smug fucker's face.


	6. September 1995

September 1995

The thing about middle school is - Jesus fuck. Where the fuck to even fucking start?

It would help if he weren't so fucking short. (Or if his "friends" didn't gape at him then try to smother their snickers every time he accidentally drops an f-bomb. "Ooh Janczewski turned into a bad boy over the summer" - had he really ever been that innocent?) He was 5'5" and 110lbs when he first woke up 13 years old again, and if trying to get used to that tiny body wasn't enough, he's grown two inches over the summer, is constantly tripping over his own feet, and his legs hurt like - did growing pains hurt this much the first time around? He can't remember, but AJ feels like they can't have. His mouth hurts all the time because the braces on his teeth are constantly being tightened and he's always cutting his tongue on them. That's in addition to everything going on with his face and his voice and in his pants -

At first, AJ thought he was dreaming. He'd been in a car accident, and was having a very vivid coma dream in which he was imagining himself someplace safe - somewhere he wasn't old enough to be responsible for anything. His mom was going to take care of him, after he'd fallen down the stairs and hit his head. He would probably wake up to face DUI charges and possible manslaughter charges (he knows he hit another car there - they probably both went tumbling over the guard rail), but not yet. At first, it was comforting.

Now it's four months later, he's still 13, and the allure has definitely worn off. AJ has stopped expecting to wake up, because he knows he won't. It's apparent now he's died, and he's in hell. 

There's a bang next to him. AJ starts, even though he's standing between two rows of lockers so the whole world is metallic banging.

"My goddamn fucking kingdom for a fucking android and the mother fucking google" the girl next to him is muttering and AJ sucks in a breath, because _what?_

"Uh, excuse me." He pokes hesitantly at her shoulder.

She ignores him. 

"Um, ma'am?"

"What?!" she whirls on him. Her hair is frizzy and everywhere and her face is round and flushed. He almost doesn't say anything, because she's really kind of intimidating, but -

"Did you just call it… _the_ google?"

"So fucking what?" She glares, then - "Wait, what?"

"Um." AJ is… he hopes she doesn't think he's nuts. "Does the word 'iphone' mean anything to you?" 

She grips his shoulders in both hands, her eyes wide now - "Jesus Horatio _Christ_ on a cracker. Thank _god_. Adam, right?" 

Despite himself, AJ grins, a grin for real this time for the first time he can remember in forever. This is Maggie Mae Benjamin, and he remembers her from before, from the first time around, even if it's a little foggy. 

This time around (in hell? purgatory?) everyone is talking about the Benjamins. Dot Benjamin wrecked her car one night over the summer, killing herself and her 10 year old son. They say Maggie was in the car too. But Maggie obviously survived (or something like that, he thinks), and all AJ's mother's friends are whispering about Jebediah and Maggie Benjamin. ("That poor man, so young and handsome to be widowed, all alone with a teenage girl to raise - that Maggie's a pretty little thing, but so _odd_. He'll have his hands full.")

Maggie does not seem pretty or little right now. She's looming over him looking positively gorgon-esque with her eyes bulging and her hair fuzzing out around her head - possibly sentient on its own - and her skin splotchy with red, and AJ feel so, so relieved. See, the first time around, Maggie Benjamin was one of the smartest people in his class (though the ladies were right, she was a little weird). Brains and a certain outside-the-boxness are good things to have in a fellow time traveler, AJ thinks. 

"Andy, are you ok? Er - Alex?" 

AJ snorts. "It's Aaron actually. AJ." 

"And did you really say…?" She whispers it almost reverently, but she's practically vibrating she's so tense, so AJ leans in and whispers in her ear (or in the vicinity of - it's lost in her hair):

"iphone." 

Her whole body seems to melt, and though she's still gripping his shoulders, it's like he's holding her up now. Cautiously, he rests his hands on her elbows just in case.

"Fuck Steve Jobs, rest his soul," she says softly into his shoulder, "but bless you AJ So-and-so for knowing of his devil creations."

AJ pats her back, giggling (actually giggling, but fuck dignity right now). "There there now, we're no longer alone. Also, Steve Jobs is still alive."

"Well shit."

Kids are giving them weird looks because AJ - purely by association but this doesn't make it any less of a fact - is one of the most popular 8th graders in the school and Maggie is definitely not. Everyone knows who she is, even before she was Maggie-whose-mom-and-brother-died, she was Maggie-one-of-the-smart-kids, but no one was scrambling to sit at her lunch table, like they do at AJ's. 

One of the best things about being actually 37 though is that AJ doesn't give a fuck. 

"When are you from?" he asks as quietly as he dares and still expect to be heard through her hair.

"2019."

The bell rings.

"Mother fucker!" Maggie hisses.

"Dude, don't stress, just meet me at lunch, yeah?" (All his "friends" are giving him shit for saying 'dude' all the time like it's 1989 but at this point he's been saying it for years and he can't break the habit.) (Also, AJ can't believe _he's_ the one saying "don't stress.")

Maggie nods, holds out a fist, and AJ bumps it. 

"Till then pony boy. Stay gold."

AJ blinks. Maggie from the future is still fucking weird then. Good to know.


End file.
